Firstly, Evan Czaplicki has some very good thoughts about this:
The chief lesson therin is that by itself, social-media dialogue will follow certain kinds of non-productive pathways unless it is intentionally shaped. The patterns are easily observeable here are a few:
- Anger/frustration propogates the fastest and most visibly.
- People will speak up much more often when they disagree then when they agree. Thus, a better way to get a picture of general opinion is to try multiple proposals and see where least disagreement emerges.
- Reaching affirmative consensus (i.e. “do this” vs “don’t do that”) is much easier with ultra-short surveys then a call for comments due to the low barriers to entry (i.e. one click).
It is also worth noting that how consensus is reached is frequently a function of wording nuances like the “agentive expression” of particular phrasing. For example saying “a caused b” versus “a happened after b” frequently can be the difference between massive disagreement and tacit compliance. This is known via studies of behavioral linguistics and it has quite frightening conclusions. Here’s a simple example:
The simple conclusion is that reaching any kind of consensus is frequently tricky, the mechanisms are non-trivial, and getting to the right place requires some experimentation with approach. Like many kinds of discovery processes, trial and error is required to get anywhere interesting.